festival planners

It takes a village (or close-knit archipelago) to pull off a literary arts festival on a remote island. And, that's exactly what this team of passionate citizens, along with some other dedicated folk, has set out to do.

JULE TRENEER

Jule Treneer, OILF President and Treasurer, is a writer and financial advisor who splits his time between Orcas Island & Paris, France. As a writer and poet, his work has appeared in N+1 magazine, The Rumpus, Triple Canopy, The New York Sun, Snorkel and Funny or Die. As Western Europe correspondent for the Faster Times, he wrote a weekly column that ranged from politics and economics reporting to lifestyle and culture pieces on books, film and sports. He is Chief Risk Officer at Madrona Partners, a family office specializing in long-biased global macro equity investing. He brings all his passion and energy to bear in overseeing OILF. Prick him and he bleeds Lit Fest.

SCOTT HUTCHINS

Scott Hutchins, OILF Vice President and Secretary, is a former Truman Capote fellow in the Wallace Stegner Program at Stanford University. His work has appeared in StoryQuarterly, Catamaran, Five Chapters, The Owls, The Rumpus, The New York Times, San Francisco Magazine and Esquire, and has been set to improvisational jazz. He is the recipient of two major Hopwood awards and the Andrea Beauchamp prize in short fiction. In 2006 and 2010, he was an artist-in-residence at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris. His novel A Working Theory of Love was a San Francisco Chronicle and Salon Best Book of 2012 and has been translated into nine languages. He lives in San Francisco.

JILL MCCABE JOHNSON

Jill McCabe Johnson is the author of Revolutions We'd Hoped We'd Outgrownand Diary of the One Swelling Sea which was awarded the 2014 Silver Award in Poetry from Nautilus Book Awards and on the OILF Board of Directos. Jill is also the author of the nonfiction chapbook Borderlines. She serves as series editor for the "Being What Makes You" anthologies from the University of Nebraska Gender Programs and is the founding director of the nonprofit, Artsmith, providing artist residencies, a reading series, workshops, and other educational events. She earned her MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University and her PhD in English at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln where she served as the Louise Van Sickle Fellow in Poetry. Jill is dedicated to protecting the beauty and riches of our planet for future generations. And eating good food. These endeavors are not mutually exclusive.

SAMUEL W. GAILEY

Samuel W. Gailey is our OILF Board Director leading festival programming. He is also the critically-acclaimed author of Deep Winter (Penguin|Blue Rider Press), a novel lauded by all major book critics, and described by The New York Times as being "Beautifully written..." and by Esquire as “Enthralling and suspenseful.” Deep Winter has been optioned by film producer Kim Zubick (The Zookeeper's Wife) and Oscar-nominated director Paula Van Der Oest. Gailey also helps other writers hone their craft through NovelLab.co for adults and kids. His work on the Lenny Dykstra Memoir, House Of Nails, earned a spot on the NY Times Bestseller list for three consecutive weeks in 2016. Before writing novels, he worked as a screenwriter, developing shows for Showtime and Fox. You can read more about Sam's upcoming novels and his writing at SamuelWGailey.com

AYN C. GAILEY

Ayn Gailey's memoirish first book Pornology: A Good Girl's Guide To Porn (Running Press U.S.|Random House U.K.) has been published in multiple languages and is slated to be adapted into film in 2018. Ayn earned a masters from Harvard, an MFA in Screenwriting from UCLA, and has edited critically-acclaimed books and written for magazines, such as Elle, Cosmo, Alegria and Documentary. Along with Samuel W. Gailey, she is a co-founder of Orcas Pact and NovelLab.co for adult writers and its not-for-profit workshop for kid novelists. She is currently finishing her first novel while helping other writers and brands see their dreams come true. Her most recent editing and ghostwriting projects with Penguin & Harper Collins, have led to authors earning national praise for their work as well as spots on the NY Times Bestseller list. You can read more about Ayn at her website & blog The Honest Woman. Ayn is on the OILF Board of Directors, inspiring branding and programming.

IRIS GRAVILLE

Iris Graville is a writer, book artist and Quaker from Lopez Island who believes everyone has a story to tell. She is leading the Board's efforts to highlight local and regional artists. Iris’s first book, Hands at Work, is a collection of dramatic black and white portraits by Summer Moon Scriver along with beautiful companion profiles by Iris that tell the stories of people who work with their hands. It was awarded a Nautilus Book Award. She holds an MFA in writing from the Northwest Institute of Literary Arts and is the publisher of SHARK REEF Literary Magazine. In 2016 she again collaborated with photographers, as well as a chef, for her second book, BOUNTY: Lopez Island Farmers, Food, and Community. Her memoir, Hiking Naked—A Quaker Woman’s Search for Balance, was published by Homebound Publications in 2017 and Iris has been reading her work to standing-room-only crowds. To learn more about Iris, visit her website.

THERESA HARRIS

Theresa Harris has been an entrepreneur and a teacher and is now a writer in the throes of completing her first memoir, an intimate reflection on her childhood traumas and a moving study on the existential idea that although we are biologically wired to protect our children at all times, that task is impossible. In addition to directing the OILF Memoir Panel, she is a member of the National Association of Memoir Writers and the Pacific Northwest Writers Association. Before she began writing her memoir, she earned a Masters in Teaching from the University of Washington and founded Thrive Art School and Thrive Art Online. Her articles on creativity have been published in ParentMap, Seattle’s Child, and Red Tricycle, among others. She moved to Orcas Island with her family in 2016 and does her best writing in the tree house that she and her husband built for their two wild boys.